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NSHD – Age 68-70 – ACE-III Visuospatial Skills

The MRC National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 68-70 sweep using the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-III (ACE-III): Visuospatial Skills measure.

Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.


Years of data collection:2014-2016
Domain:Non-verbal ability
Measures:Visuospatial skills
CHC:Gv (Visual processing)
CLOSER Source:Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NSHD 2014 (Age 68) and 2015 (Age 69) (links open in a new tab)
Administration method:Administered by a research nurse. Mostly conducted using ACEmobile app, installed on an iPad, with prompts to guide interviewer through the process. Pen and paper used where necessary (e.g. drawing tests).
Procedure:Participants were asked to:
(i) Copy two objects (0 - 3)
(ii) Draw a clock with numbers and hands indicating the time as ten minutes past five (0 - 5)
(iii) Count the number of dots in 4 separate pictures (0 -4)
(iv) Identify 4 partially complete letters (0 - 4)
Link to questionnaire:https://skylark.ucl.ac.uk/NSHD/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=mrepo:ace-iii.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:0 - 16
Item-level variable(s):Not currently available
Total score/derived variable(s):ACEVISIOTOT15x
Descriptives:Raw score
N = 1,778
Range = 4 - 16
Mean = 15.05
SD = 1.29
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):Mean = 834.14, SD = 2.93, Range = 828 - 848
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Mathuranath, P. S., Nestor, P. J., Berrios, G. E., Rakowicz, W., & Hodges, J. R. (2000). A brief cognitive test battery to differentiate Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Neurology, 55(11), 1613-1620.
Technical resources:Noone, P. (2015). Addenbrooke's cognitive examination-III. Occupational Medicine, 65(5), 418-420.
Example articles:Matías-Guiu, J. A., Valles-Salgado, M., Rognoni, T., Hamre-Gil, F., Moreno-Ramos, T., & Matías-Guiu, J. (2017). Comparative diagnostic accuracy of the ACE-III, MIS, MMSE, MoCA, and RUDAS for screening of Alzheimer Disease. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 43(5-6), 237-246.
James, S. N., Davis, D., O'Hare, C., Sharma, N., John, A., Gaysina, D., ... & Richards, M. (2018). Lifetime affective problems and later-life cognitive state: Over 50 years of follow-up in a British birth cohort study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 241, 348-355.

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This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.